Month: August 2014

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Not White Privilege – Oppression of the Black and of the Poor

 

Bill O’Reilly brought Megyn Kelly on his Monday show to have a discussion about the concept of “white privilege.” He asked Kelly if she believed it was real.

– Click through for more –

 

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

 

O’Reilly says that culture is the issue.

 

The issue is the culture of the privileged classes oppressing people of color and the poor.

 

Both O’Reilly and Kelly never mention oppression, racism and poverty.

 

The Huffpost article talks about this being a conversation about ‘white privilege’, but then Kelly goes on to quote statistics caused by lack of wealth, opportunity, oppression and racism.

 

White privilege is about whites getting the benefit of the doubt while people of color are thought to be guilty at the slightest perceived possible misstep.

 

White privilege is not about opportunities through wealth. That would be called ‘wealth privilege’.

 

O’Reilly and Kelly need to go back to school.

 

They can start by reading Peggy McIntosh’s  ‘White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack’

 

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Shooting instructor accidentally shot with Uzi by girl, 9, dies

A 39-year-old shooting instructor accidentally shot by one of his 9-year-old students on Monday has died.

Source: www.8newsnow.com

 

Why do the parents think it’s a good idea to teach a 9 year old how to fire an Uzi?

 

Now this poor 9 year old girl has to live with the fact that she accidentally killed this man for the rest of her life.

 

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White Privilege – explained another way

Two pictures of racial tensions in the US, taken 50 years apart.

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The challenge with white privilege is that most white people cannot see it. We assume that the experiences and opportunities afforded to us are the same afforded to others. Sadly, this simply isn’t true. Privileged people can fall into the trap of universalizing experiences and laying them across other people’s experiences as an interpretive lens…

 

 

Source: manofdepravity.com

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Why All Communities Must Demand an End to Police Brutality

 

The images out of Ferguson, Missouri, these past two weeks have been shocking: tear gas blanketing suburban streets, law enforcement creating a war zone and defiant protesters braving it all. But it is important to remember that what started Ferguson’s fight is far too common: the police killing of an unarmed black teen.

African-Americans are the primary targets of law-enforcement profiling and violence, as the killings of Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Jonathan Ferrell and Eric Garner all attest. But during this past week, Latino, Asian-American, Arab-American and Muslim organizations have all released statements of solidarity informed by similar experiences with discriminatory law enforcement practices, as well as an urgency to collectively identify and implement solutions.

 

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Source: www.thenation.com

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Death by Law Enforcement: What the data tells us – and what it doesn’t

 

“When a police officer kills someone while trying to stop a crime or make an arrest, government agencies classify the death as a legal intervention. The death of Mike Brown, the 18-year-old and unarmed teenager killed by a police officer earlier this month in Ferguson, Missouri will likely be classified under this term when it comes time to report the circumstances of his death to the national databases that track such information.”

 

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Source: sunlightfoundation.com

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‘A cemetery for our people’: Guatemalan consul sees life and death of Texas migrant crisis

In 2013 Alba Caceres sent back 48 bodies from South Texas. But it’s not the dead she worries about so much as the living

Source: www.theguardian.com

 

It’s not just a Texas migrant crisis.

 

Click through to see the map showing how many human remains were found in border states.

 

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U.S. Immigration Before 1965


January 1, 1892, Annie Moore, a teenager from County Cork, Ireland, was the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island. She had made the nearly two-week journey across the Atlantic Ocean in steerage with her two younger brothers. Annie later raised a family on New York City’s Lower East Side.

 

Some of America’s first settlers came in search of freedom to practice their faith. In 1620, a group of roughly 100 people later known as the Pilgrims fled religious persecution in Europe and arrived at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they established a colony. They were soon followed by a larger group seeking religious freedom, the Puritans, who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By some estimates, 20,000 Puritans migrated to the region between 1630 and 1640.

A larger share of immigrants came to America seeking economic opportunities. However, because the price of passage was steep, an estimated one-half or more of the white Europeans who made the voyage did so by becoming indentured servants. Although some people voluntarily indentured themselves, others were kidnapped in European cities and forced into servitude in America. Additionally, thousands of English convicts were shipped across the Atlantic as indentured servants.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.history.com

 

This article mentions the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 but fails to mention the Asian Exclusion act of 1924.

 

It also fails to mention that non-Europeans were not allowed to become citizens at many points in U.S. history.

 

People born in India were not allowed to become US citizens till 1946.

 

All Asians were allowed to become citizens in 1952 with the Walter–McCarran Act.

 

If we do not talk about citizenship rights when we talk about immigration, we are missing half of the discussion about dignity, respect and humanity.

 

Today’s social injustice issue is still about who is allowed to immigrate and become a citizen.

 

History shows that humans were allowed to (im)migrate to the U.S. for both religious and economic reasons.

 

Today’s (im)migrants move for reasons of survival (like the Irish did).

And they also move as war refugees, climate refugees, economic refugees and political refugees.

 

Drop the i-Word.

 

No human is illegal.